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Keywords: Women's Ordination

  • RELIGION

    Women deacons: A closed book?

    • Bill Uren
    • 11 June 2024

    In a 60 Minutes interview, Pope Francis was asked whether there would ever be the prospect within the Catholic Church of a woman being ordained as a deacon. The Pope’s reply was a blunt ‘No’. This negative response came as a surprise to many Vatican watchers. 

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  • Calling the Pope a feminist

    • Maureen O'Brien
    • 11 May 2015

    An eye-opener in the recent ABC TV Compass program on women in church leadership was how willing two leading  Australian Catholic women, Kristina Keneally and Sr Trish Madigan, were in using the 'ordination' word and seeing women's ordination as an essential part of equality in church governance. All indications are that Pope Francis doesn't share their view and nowhere more so than when he wrote in his Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, that 'The reservation of the priesthood to males ... is not a question open to discussion.'

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  • RELIGION

    Radical Pope's gender flaws

    • Megan Graham
    • 13 March 2014
    47 Comments

    The broad support Francis receives from progressives, despite his unwillingness to even consider female ordination, demonstrates how marginalised women's issues really are in our society. He may have changed the game in terms of the Church's engagement with the poor, but this does not diminish the significance of his oppressive and outdated views on gender roles.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Philosophy of falling

    • Ailsa Piper
    • 18 September 2013
    9 Comments

    Waters fall. So does night. We fall asleep, sometimes because staying awake is too painful. Soldiers fall, and we mourn them. They are boys, many of them, so fall-able. We fall into love, and out of it again, like it is some dark hole. We forget that love should be about rising, because we have fallen back onto cliché. We go through life as though we will always be upright, and when we fall, it hurts.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Prophet of women's ordination

    • Janet Scarfe
    • 13 March 2011
    18 Comments

    Patricia Brennan put the ordination of women on the agenda of the Anglican Church and kept it there. Like Germaine Greer, she was tall, with an unmissable presence and rich voice. And, like Germaine, she was often called strident.

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  • RELIGION

    'Divided' Anglicans dodge conflict

    • Andrew McGowan
    • 30 September 2010
    1 Comment

    The Australian Anglican Church is divided on questions of women's ordination, sexuality, lay presidency and liturgical texts. But the recent assembly in Melbourne was relatively polite, although the question of the conservative, evangelical Sydney Diocese's relationship with the rest was never far from the surface.

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  • RELIGION

    Women's ordination and other crimes of passion

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 August 2010
    48 Comments

    The naming of participating in women's ordination as a crime against faith os disconcerting. I recently attended the ordination of a woman friend in another church. The celebration was prayerful and joyful, and promised to be the prelude to a fruitful ministry by faithful and committed candidates. 

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Making more room for women in the Church

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 26 February 2010
    19 Comments

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  • RELIGION

    Mixed blessings on Anglican road to Rome

    • Andrew McGowan
    • 23 October 2009
    22 Comments

    Liberal Roman Catholics have particular reason to be perturbed at the influx of ex-Anglicans driven not by ecumenical zeal, but by dogged adherence to positions on women's ordination or human sexuality which bespeak a broader conservatism.

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